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Facebook's Adam Mosseri on Why You'll See Less Video, More from Friends

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Re: Facebook's Adam Mosseri on Why You'll See Less Video, More from Friends

#21

Post by bogomipz »

>"Video is, primarily, a passive experience. You tend to just sit back and watch it. And while you're watching it, you're not usually liking or comment or speaking with friends."

And how is this different than the passive experience of scrolling endlessly through people's vacation pictures, food pictures and baby pictures? Is clicking on a blue thumb icon really an "active" experience. Is writing a one lime comment about the picture of someones hamburger or their vacation shots really engaging with friends? This is no more of an active social interaction than a bag of potato chips is a meal.

I feel like the genie is out of the bottle and it's not going back in, regardless of these PR contrivances to convince us otherwise.

However, I'm sure in the next 6 month'z Zuckerberg will be on a press junket telling us all that "the problem is fixed" and that their data shows that people are having meaningful experiences on FB and that FB is bringing people together.

Re: Facebook's Adam Mosseri on Why You'll See Less Video, More from Friends

#22

Post by save_ferris »

carlesfe wrote: post #11
CPLX wrote: post #5

Why don't they just give us the ability to customize what we want to run on our feed? Like we could choose chronological, controversial, event based, whatever, I'm sure they could be creative, some could be algorithms. They could keep the default they have now which most people wouldn't change. Then they could inject ads by whatever means they want and we could check them out or click on them or ignore them as we see…

Agree. I'll add my $0.02 because I know FB engineers read HN, and also to provide material to n-gate :) Everybody uses FB differently. Some people use it to share and read news. Others as an "aggregator" for different services (Insta, Twitter...). Others for groups. Or chats. Or to connect with businesses. I use it exclusively to share posts and pics with friends. However, after years and years of using the "hide all…

> But it lets me connect with people that I have no other way of communicating with.

This is such an unfortunate and all-too-common mindset in our world. Of course there are other ways to connect with people. They may not be as simple to use. It blows my mind how much people talk about how tech can do amazing, world-changing things while simultaneously telling themselves that alternative methods of online communication simply aren't possible.

> Give more of what I want, or my engagement will drop.

Think about what you're asking from Facebook's perspective. You're threatening to reduce engagement if you don't receive a feature that almost guarantees a reduction in engagement across the entire platform because everyone will have more control to filter what they see. How does that make business sense to them?

Re: Facebook's Adam Mosseri on Why You'll See Less Video, More from Friends

#24

Post by mancerayder »

CPLX wrote: post #5

Why don't they just give us the ability to customize what we want to run on our feed? Like we could choose chronological, controversial, event based, whatever, I'm sure they could be creative, some could be algorithms. They could keep the default they have now which most people wouldn't change. Then they could inject ads by whatever means they want and we could check them out or click on them or ignore them as we see…

This isn't one of those "Why don't they just..." type posts where it's obvious why not. It's a serious question, like why can't they do this? I mean presumably there's some answer where they say that they have tested it and the current scheme increases engagement, or something like that

My answer is: The same reason Chrome took away the ability to stop video autoplay. The same reason the Roku apps are crippled so, for example you can't filter search results in the YouTube app or skip Reuters ads in its app or stop Netflix from showing trailers simply by scrolling.

Because the world of media has transitioned from a come-and-find me to one of I'm-coming-at-your-attention. Kind of like TV used to be. Except now we have personalized coming-at-you.

That's why Facebook can't give you settings to fine tune your feed. It would ruin the coming-at-you.

And ad tech can't have that.

Re: Facebook's Adam Mosseri on Why You'll See Less Video, More from Friends

#25

Post by skshogun »

fogzen wrote: post #16

Not being in control of what I see is why I stopped using Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I want to control what is in my feed, and I want it in chronological order. Twitter and Facebook make me feel passive and helpless. I use reddit because I’m in control: I only see what I subscribe to, and I can switch between popular and chronological.

You can still switch between algorithmic and chronological order on Twitter. At least on their mobile website

Re: Facebook's Adam Mosseri on Why You'll See Less Video, More from Friends

#26

Post by fogzen »

skshogun wrote: post #25
fogzen wrote: post #16

Not being in control of what I see is why I stopped using Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I want to control what is in my feed, and I want it in chronological order. Twitter and Facebook make me feel passive and helpless. I use reddit because I’m in control: I only see what I subscribe to, and I can switch between popular and chronological.

You can still switch between algorithmic and chronological order on Twitter. At least on their mobile website

Are you sure? I have “show best tweets first” turned off and my tweets are not in chronological order after signing in to check right now.

Re: Facebook's Adam Mosseri on Why You'll See Less Video, More from Friends

#27

Post by sushisource »

save_ferris wrote: post #22
carlesfe wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. I'll add my $0.02 because I know FB engineers read HN, and also to provide material to n-gate :) Everybody uses FB differently. Some people use it to share and read news. Others as an "aggregator" for different services (Insta, Twitter...). Others for groups. Or chats. Or to connect with businesses. I use it exclusively to share posts and pics with friends. However, after years and years of using the "hide all…

> But it lets me connect with people that I have no other way of communicating with. This is such an unfortunate and all-too-common mindset in our world. Of course there are other ways to connect with people. They may not be as simple to use. It blows my mind how much people talk about how tech can do amazing, world-changing things while simultaneously telling themselves that alternative methods of online communicati…

That's a really uncharitable interpretation of the other comment. That's the way that commenter likes to connect with people he might otherwise not engage with. Sure, he could call them, or whatever you're thinking of - but probably, he just wouldn't. Facebook makes it easy enough that he can keep in touch with these people that otherwise might be too much effort.

Call that lazy, or whatever, but I think it's an extremely reasonable admission. Not everyone has the inclination to pour tons and tons of effort into maintaining a large social network purely through offline means.

Re: Facebook's Adam Mosseri on Why You'll See Less Video, More from Friends

#29

Post by unmango »

mancerayder wrote: post #24
CPLX wrote: post #5

Why don't they just give us the ability to customize what we want to run on our feed? Like we could choose chronological, controversial, event based, whatever, I'm sure they could be creative, some could be algorithms. They could keep the default they have now which most people wouldn't change. Then they could inject ads by whatever means they want and we could check them out or click on them or ignore them as we see…

This isn't one of those "Why don't they just..." type posts where it's obvious why not. It's a serious question, like why can't they do this? I mean presumably there's some answer where they say that they have tested it and the current scheme increases engagement, or something like that My answer is: The same reason Chrome took away the ability to stop video autoplay. The same reason the Roku apps are crippled so, fo…

I disagree. Most people wouldn't flip the switch. And by most I mean 99.9% wouldn't even know what the option does.

I think the real answer is: adding such a switch would be very very hard UX-wise. Also imagine what would happen to users that flipped the switch and then never knew how to turn it back off, or whatever. You get the idea.

Re: Facebook's Adam Mosseri on Why You'll See Less Video, More from Friends

#30

Post by balls187 »

My interpretation is this: Facebook is now going to charge advertisers a lot more money to appear on Newsfeeds.

Eventually the newsfeed will become polluted again, and Facebook will announce sweeping changes to address this and the cycle will continue.

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